Archive for November 15th, 2011

Smartphones can be useful for doing many things, especially for management of personal information. If you regularly deal with business cards, you likely found specialized applications that allow you to effortlessly scan any business card to create a new contact entry on your device. The App Store has dozens of such apps as iPhone’s Business Card Reader from Shape Services.

Read the rest of this entry »

Typically geniuses staying behind Genius bars use MacBook Pros to provide customers with help and support, facilitate repairs, look up customer information, and order new parts. But last week some Apple retail stores replaced MacBook Pros with iPads that can mirror functionality of the laptops.

These iPads will obviously make the Genius’ job easier and provide a much better experience for Apple’s customers that are looking for repairs and/or help from the Genius Bar. At least one reason for the iPad is that Apple’s tablet is portable so that geniuses can help customers anywhere in a store. So use of the iPads may transform Genius bar from a place in a store where you may receive quality help to the service that you can get anywhere in a store.

Using MacBook Pros, Apple has been limited to fitting only a few the computers at Genius Bars. The iPad allows Apple to serve more people at one time at Genius bar. Moreover, Apple has already developed a system called MobileGenius, which runs on iOS devices and provides the same services as MacBook Pros.

According to rumors from Apple’s back office, the company is developing a larger iPhone display and a smaller display for iPad. An insider said to The Korea Times that Apple is engineering a shrunken version of the 9.7-inch iPad. According to the IDG, which translated the publication from Korean, a new iPad called iPad mini will feature a 7.35-inch display.

Read the rest of this entry »

Research firm Gartner recently released its estimates of PC sales in Western Europe for the third quarter of 2011. Despite the overall decline of 11.4% for the market, Apple’s sales in Western Europe were up 19.6% year-over-year. In mobile PC market Apple showed the most significant performance of 28%, comparing to the last year performance.

Gartner especially paid attention to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, noting that in the UK Apple became one of five top vendors. Apple’s sales here increased up to 21.8% year-over-year. So now the company takes the fourth place in the United Kingdom with 7.8% of the market. Apple’s rival Samsung goes slightly behind with 7.3% of the market, despite the fact that Samsung’s growth there was 39%.

As for the U.S. PC market, Apple took 12.9% for the third quarter, demonstration significant increase in sales both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.

According to a new research carried out by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Apple’s October Mac sales in the United States were up 19% year-over-year. That means that the company could reach analysts’ expectations and sell 5.1-5.3 million units for the full quarter.

Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray shared the latest domestic sales data from the NPD Group on Monday, which showed Mac sales up 19 percent year over year in the month of October. As sales continue to pick up leading up to Christmas, he sees Apple selling between 5.1 million and 5.3 million Macs during the December quarter.

Those numbers would represent year over year growth of between 23 percent and 28 percent. Consensus on Wall Street has called for Apple to report sales of about 5.2 million Macs during the quarter.

Last quarter Apple managed to sell 4.89 million Macs. These very numbers spurred analysts to push their Mac estimates to over 5 million.

Unfortunately, the iPod shipments in the United States are continuing to decrease. In October the iPod sales were down about 18% year-over-year. That might be connected with the fact that more and more consumers prefer to use smartphones for portable music needs rather than music players. Nevertheless such decline is smaller when it was expected. Analysts predicted a 20% drop for this quarter. That is why Munster suggests that Apple may sell approximately 16 million music players in for the full quarter.

Digitimes is now reporting that Apple have ordered a small number of components for a 15-inch ultra-thin notebook that Apple is said to start shipping this month with mass shipments set for the beginning of March 2012.

Upstream suppliers of Apple have recently started shipping a small volume of components for a 15-inch ultra-thin notebook model from Apple in November and the device could be either MacBook Air or just a thinner MacBook Pro. The new MacBook is expected to appear as early as the second quarter of 2012, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

It remains unclear whether the final version of the 15-inch laptop will be marketed as a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro. Rumors related to the new Apple’s notebook have been circulating since July, when we reported that Apple was finishing up work on a new ultra-thin laptop, and at the end of October it was rumored that Apple was finishing a “test phase” and the new machine was nearing the production. The Mac maker is also rumored to be developing a 17-inch ultraportable MacBook, though such a machine was not mentioned in Tuesday's report.

Back in February, Appleinsider reported that according to people familiar with the matter, Apple appears poised to move its MacBook Pro lines more toward the MacBook Air next year. So it is likely that the new Apple’s notebook will feature a SSD rather than HDD, similar to current MacBook Air models, and would forego an optical drive.

Using this tutorial you will be able to create a custom firmware and tether jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 running on iPod Touch 4G. This tutorial uses Sn0wBreeze 2.8b11 for Windows.

Read the rest of this entry »

Using this tutorial you will be able to create a custom firmware and tether jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 running on iPod Touch 3G. This tutorial uses Sn0wBreeze 2.8b11 for Windows.

Read the rest of this entry »

Using this tutorial you will be able to create a custom firmware and tether jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 running on first generation iPad. This tutorial uses Sn0wBreeze 2.8b11 for Windows.

Read the rest of this entry »

Using this tutorial you will be able to create a custom firmware, tether jailbreak and unlock iOS 5.0.1 running on iPhone 4. This tutorial uses Sn0wBreeze 2.8b11 for Windows.

Sn0wBreeze will also preserve baseband version if you need carrier unlock.

Read the rest of this entry »